Charles River Laboratories is preparing for its most significant leadership change in a generation. James C. Foster, who has spent roughly 50 years with the company and 34 of them as chief executive, will step down from the CEO post effective May 5, 2026, immediately following the company’s annual shareholder meeting. Foster first joined the organization in 1976 as general counsel before rising to the top job in 1992, a tenure that has spanned the company’s transformation from a specialized research supplier into a global, publicly traded life-sciences powerhouse generating billions of dollars in annual revenue.
Succeeding Foster is Birgit Girshick, the company’s current chief operating officer, who has an even longer history at Charles River, having joined in 1989. Over more than three decades, Girshick moved through a series of increasingly senior roles, including general manager of the company’s avian vaccine services business, corporate vice president overseeing global biopharmaceutical services, and executive vice president responsible for multiple business units, before being named chief operating officer in 2021. Her elevation to CEO reflects a succession built largely from within, drawing on institutional knowledge accumulated across nearly the entire history of the modern company.
The transition also reshapes the composition of the boardroom. Martin Mackay, currently the board’s lead independent director, is set to become non-executive chair once Foster steps back, separating the chair and chief executive roles that Foster had held simultaneously for years. Foster is expected to remain involved with the company as a member of its board of directors, providing continuity even as day-to-day leadership passes to Girshick.
Charles River Laboratories operates as one of the world’s leading contract research organizations, supplying the drug discovery, safety testing, and manufacturing support services that pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and academic research clients rely on to advance new therapies toward regulatory approval. The changeover comes at a moment when demand for outsourced research services has been closely watched by investors amid shifting biotech funding cycles. With Girshick inheriting an organization built substantially under her predecessor’s watch, and Mackay assuming an independent oversight role at the board level, the company is signaling a deliberate, orderly handoff rather than an abrupt break from the strategy that carried it through five decades of growth.